


soldier poet king

by GraceEliz



Series: The Eldritch Collection [9]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Attitude!, Edmund Pevensie will Fight God and Win, Eldritch, Gen, Snark!, Timeline what, brotherly banter!, canon: exists me: have you considered an eldritch au?, everything is better when grace has eldritched it, fencing!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28370829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: Out under the white or grey or rosy sky, the boys would turn to the rising sun and stand, for a handful of minutes. Peter turned his face up to the sun, eyes smoothly closed, absorbing the weak light even as his breath misted about him in white clouds quickly dispersed. Sometimes, when the ground was iced hard and dry, he would slide down onto his knees, back straight and chin high, and his lips would move as though he prayed.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie & Original Male Character(s), Edmund Pevensie & Peter Pevensie
Series: The Eldritch Collection [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992514
Comments: 18
Kudos: 49





	soldier poet king

**Author's Note:**

> it is done

One young man stood in the shadow cast by the edge of the hall. “You cannot possibly be serious,” said Peter with a dubiously raised eyebrow. “This is probably one of your worse ideas.”

The other stood in the centre of the irregular splash of dimming sunshine. Edmund laughed brightly, silver-bell-bright, stretching his arms up above his head as though the broadswords weighed nothing more than a ration-book. The bright sunlight glinted off them onto the stone walls of the courtyard, their shine near-blinding. “Come now, when have I steered us wrong?”

With no hesitation Peter opened his mouth in the way brothers always did.

“Recently,” amended Ed quickly, pointing the less-ornate sword at his brother almost threateningly. “Gosh, these are heavy.” He lowered the other, giving both a few experimental swings around his legs before darting them out at, one presumed, some imagined foe or dust-speck.

The older brother laughed, loud and strident as though he held the right to dominate the space. “Well, that is usually how it goes. We could use rapiers?”

Edmund sneered, teeth bared and nose wrinkled. “Rapiers,” he said slowly but seriously, eyes laughing even as his mouth and brows remained heavy, “are for politicians.” He strode across the open space to his brother, bowed smartly and presented the blades. “Your choice, majesty.”

One of the younger students snorted to hear the nickname, but Peter didn’t react beyond a twitch of his eyebrow as though to encourage his brother to tread carefully. The pause weighed, stretched until the only noise was the pigeons on the roof and the leaves of the great yew quietly hissing in the breeze. “You tell me, Ed,” he finally said, spreading his hands.

“This one then,” Edmund told him without hesitation as though the conversation flowed along an expected route, “it’s better weighted by a very tiny amount.” Both boys tossed their swords hand-to-hand, with expressions of such concentration and depth of understanding it was a great shame that the stillness was broken by Peter whirling aggressively at his slightly smaller brother.

The spar kicked into speed far too quickly for most of the watching boys’ comfort. Like molten light, the blades whipped around, the clanging and clashing somewhere between musical and physically painful – but of course things are perfectly capable of being both beautiful and painful to observe. As the sun passed behind the peak of the roof, the swords lost their supernatural shine, now nothing more than brutal cold steel in what pale autumn light remained in the courtyard. In another half-hour, all light and lingering warmth would be gone.

“You’re slowing, old man,” teased Edmund on a laugh, dancing out of reach far enough he could afford a second to stand, sweaty and strong, perched on one of the old benches at the foot of the tree. Above him were green leaves, below dead grass, and for a second – just that one second – he could have been conqueror, king or death incarnate, silhouetted in the waning light.

In retaliation Peter’s sword flashed faster, sending his younger brother leaping down to even footing with a rapid curse which had the younger boys tittering nervously. “Now, now, whippet,” he responded smartly, with enough of a hard tone several of the older boys could hear he’d taken something about the flung insult to heart, “weren’t you ever taught to respect your better?”

“Taught, never learned – point!”

Peter huffed, stilling after their explosive action. He hooked his finger through the nick on the inner seam of his upper arm; his fingers, encased in black gloves as they were, seemed for a moment to be misplaced, too well-practiced for a teenage lad who couldn’t have raised a blade two years since. “Very precise.”

“What can I say,” needled Edmund, bowing sarcastically with his sword a sweeping glimmer, “precision in all matters, no?”

“Git.”

The younger boy barked out a laugh, high and sharp. “I must confess I love you too,” he said fondly, but with such a tone of superiority half the watching boys thought Peter must surely strike out and wallop some respect into him. After all, they all knew, Edmund had a less than shining reputation.

Peter shook his head, and with an exhale released the tight-held poise. “Blades away, Ed,” he suddenly ordered, and the door into the courtyard from the Masters’ halls slammed open just in time for someone to yell that the Matron nurse had arrived. Like mice caught in a torch-light the boys scattered.

Strange, but in later days, many of them would swear they’d seen Edmund Pevensie flick his fingers at the Matron, an ice-cold wind springing forth to slam the door shut behind her; in the ensuing distraction nobody saw where he and his brother snuck off to.

Early morning brought with it grumblings and complaints of a half-dozen boys, muttered curses about the cold floor and high hisses when the ice on the wash-basins had to be broken. Each day began the same, with Peter suggesting that perhaps they should begin keeping the water away from the windows only to be reminded that last time they tried, and the time before, one of them always kicked it over. Laughter would pass between the boys, in that comfort grown from long-term cohabitation, then one would make some snide remark about the quality of the food and their minds would turn to that second most important matter: breakfast. Once dressed and fastened up Peter was the first to slip from the room, meeting his brother Edmund in the hall and slipping out into the cold dawn-light.

Out under the white or grey or rosy sky, the boys would turn to the rising sun and stand, for a handful of minutes. Peter turned his face up to the sun, eyes smoothly closed, absorbing the weak light even as his breath misted about him in white clouds quickly dispersed. Sometimes, when the ground was iced hard and dry, he would slide down onto his knees, back straight and chin high, and his lips would move as though he prayed.

Edmund would always arrive first, in the still-dark, as if he was as much at ease in the pre-dawn mizzle that had everyone else grumbling as he was in the tender warmth of summer. The days when it snowed, his footprints would seem a little shallow as though he weighed far less than they knew he did (and know his weight his friends did, affectionate as they were). When ice caked the paths, it was Ed who seemed least concerned, sauntering through the gardens and jogging up and down the pathways with the sort of reluctantly peaceful expression occasionally found on the Headmaster. His friends thought privately that where peter was beloved of the sun itself, and surely he was, then Edmund was the bridge between day and night; just as he provided a grounding for his brother’s more authoritarian phases.

Shadows would seem to shroud his feet, night-creatures often caught in the dawning light for a moment before skittering off away with Peter’s approach.

But that was then.

Their sister came to visit them, in the bleak mid-January as the days slowly grew longer. In her wake the blanketing snow took on a serene silence, tranquil. Her older brother met her with a kiss to the cheek and a loving laugh, her hand winding into his arm. They strode through the school perfectly in step, her low heels a rhythmic tap.

“She looks like a Princess,” said one of the boys. His friend huffed, cuffed him on the back of the head for his cheek. “What? Look at her. Have you ever seen a being so beautiful?”

“She’s beautiful alright.”

The first boy shook his head, leaning over the bannister far enough to have Edmund pulling him back by the jacket. “No. I’ve met the Royal Family, remember? She walks like a Princess.”

Ed laughed. “Dare you to tell her that.”

“Not a chance,” he immediately refuted. “I’m no court’s fool.”

“Seriously, Pip, what have you been reading?” Ed tugged Pip away from the bannister, just in case their Romantically-inclined friend gave in to his overdramatic tendencies.

Pip sniffed, tugged his jacket straight as he none-too-subtly eyed the figures of Susan and Peter whispering together down in the atrium. “I would tell you but none of you can read.”

They all rolled their eyes, calling insults at his retreating back as he flicked his fingers up over his shoulder rudely. “Where is he going, anyway?”

“Oh God,” said Ed, “he’s gone to talk to Su.”

The thing about Susan Pevensie, Pip would tell his friends a few days later, was that she was the serenity of the untouchable. She was every Romantic poet’s dream, a beauty with such untouchable composure that the word sublime seemed made for her alone: Pip found himself thinking about her during studies, during writing and history. Susan Pevensie was the type he would be willing to go to war for, a strong woman who he was certain would take no nonsense. After all, who could countenance a fool when the very depths of the oceans had not a touch on her depth? Who could bear to suffer the company of shallow people when the mountains themselves faded in majesty?

Yet she was always so gentle, kind and motherly and just how he always imagined Queens of novels and ancient history to be. Gentle and strong. After all, she’d gone head-to-head with Ed, filling in a half-hour whilst they waited for Peter to finish some of his lessons, and performed far beyond anything Pip could have ever dreamed of being honoured to see. Flashing blades and her braid whipping behind her head, but she’d fought so differently.

“Are you still pining for the fjords, Pip?”

“Pining for something,” he agreed with a weak sigh. “Sunup soon, Ed. Going out?”

Ed hummed, looking out into the dark with a subdued wisdom. “Spring is coming. Soon will rise again the living, the dead to stay below beyond where they belong. Spring is coming. Soon will rise up once more the near-forgotten joys of living, and above them all the hands of my sister.”

“Edmund, I demand you tell me where you get these words from,” sighed Pip as he scribbled into his ever-present notebook, full currently of half-sketched Susans and vague imaginings of otherworldly monarchs. “I was beginning to think I was going crazy but you always come through with such beautiful concepts.”

“You thought those words are about Susan? Those are Lucy. Susan is the soft cool of autumn, the setting sun and impossible colours filling the sky, leaves falling so soft and gentle that death is the afterthought; death seems like it has no place in this time of stripping trees and fast-fading glory and revelry in the last of summer, in the taking-in of harvest. Autumn is the time of gentle death, and through it all, more collected than the finest of all deer, strides my sister, Queen of all she surveys.”

Pip heaved out a deeply satisfied sigh, his poet’s soul nourished by the intensity of the images provided by his friend’s words. “You might be a bit mad, my friend, but I shall never tire of your ability as a wordsmith.” He cast his eyes down to a sketch of Susan, just detailed enough to convey the sublime serenity of her expression, one eyebrow high in disdain. “She is gentle like death, don’t you think?”

With a dubious glance Ed conveyed that his friend was, perhaps, a few marbles short of a bag himself.

“No, I’m right,” he insisted, well aware that as the stars faded into pale pre-dawn grey his time with his friend was running out until teatime, “she – she walks like she owns the very air we breathe yet would never consider taking it from us. She is the grace and beauty of an angel and yet that destructive power is hidden, just below the surface, like a wave about to break, like the current of a mighty river.”

Ed laughed, quietly, as though he’d forgotten for a moment where he was. “Pip,” he said firmly, “you are a Turkish delight short of a tuck box. Never change.”

Little Lucy Pevensie was a child whose eyes were as old as any field surgeon’s with decades of experience, and yet hope and faith shone through her entire personality with a vibrancy like that of the sun over a field of new growth. Even as the boys ran around roaring insults at each other – which was how they usually showed the best of their affection – she remained smiling and bouncing on her toes, craning her neck to wait for her brothers.

“Lucy Pevensie?”

She whirled about, meeting Pip’s eyes immediately. Such was the strength in her that for a moment, just one, he would have been willing to say she was a veritable oak, mighty and ancient; gnarled branches and gradually unfurling leaves of the brightest purest green. But the image only lasted a few moments, long enough for him to be surprised, and she was only a child again. “Hello!”

“I’m Pip, Ed’s friend,” he said, holding out one hand briefly before having to snatch it back to hold his books. “He’s just collecting Pete. We’re to meet under that Yew tree.”

Lucy gathered up his dropped sketchbooks. “I suppose we’d better get over there.”

Her upper back was bared to the summer sun, long scars tracing up her spine – but then he blinks, and they’re gone, just a child’s tan skin once more. But how much a child could any of them remain, under the hail of bombs in a war they were but victims of? She walked like Edmund, he noticed, like there was a weight at her hip missing, like she was counterbalancing a thing no longer extant if it ever was to begin with. A small weight, perhaps a dagger; not so much of a rock as her brothers, who walked at their straightest with a holstered blade at one hip. Memorably, Edmund had managed to get hold of a pair of blades, a matched set a little lighter than the standard broadswords he and his brother preferred over rapiers, and seemed more settled into his skin in that one afternoon than in all the weeks before. If he were to give this child a blade, would she too be more balanced?

“So, spring-sprite,” he said as they forced through the crowd, helped on their way by Pip’s judicious use of insults and Lucy’s sharp elbows, “where is you sister, most fair of all maidens?”

She laughed, and it was like the blooms below the tree lifted their heads in laughter alongside her. “She is going to meet us there, I believe.”

Pip nodded, thinking rather wistfully of the sublime beauty and presence of his muse. “I am sure you must be looking forward to it.”

“Oh, I am,” she said intently, and smiled, and Pip smiled back. Her smile felt a little like strength or benediction, as though with her by his side it would be possible for any obstacle to be shattered to dust. “Summer is in full swing, isn’t it beautiful?”

Her hand touched his delicately, with all the poise and collection of a princess. “I suppose it couldn’t be anything else,” he admitted, turning his face up to the sun. Funny, but it never felt half so hot as when he was here at school, with his friends, the winter air never so crisp.

_The Original Snippet_

The Pevensie brothers are minor celebrities among the boys in school. Peter, the elder, is sometimes arrogant, superior; deservedly, perhaps, but irritating. His brother, younger, is the more patient. Kinder, even, sometimes, more willing to listen and less likely to leap into the fray. They do say that he is the worse opponent, however. If Edmund is involved, there is certainly something to be guilty over.

But there’s more than that. Sometimes, in the early morning, Peter stands on the grass and tips his head to the rising sun, and burns in its light like a Saint of old. At others, Edmund silences a hall with the slam of his fist on the desk, and everyone – even his brother – falls into guilted silence which stretches and pulls until apologies are issues. When it snows, the crystals land on Peter and melt perhaps quicker than they should, but they land on Edmund and they stay, bright and shining. He despises it, that is clear, but it remains.

Once, he was fighting with Peter, the high-speed sparring they do so well, and he yelled and for a moment the snow stopped.

He is, so they say, a little too close to Death.

She stalks the halls and streets of her home like a conquering Queen – or rather, like the land is hers and always has been, like you are the interloper. Her eyes are kind, and gentle, yet she is imposing, and for all the urge may exist to approach her, to pay her a compliment, there are too few who are bold enough to brave that soft aura of strength. Gentle, they say; but she is gentle in the manner of water, eternal and unstoppable. Susan Pevensie is gentle in the way of Death, in the peace of the End of Things. She breathes, and the world breathes with her, gentle and owned.

She stalks the streets and halls of her home, and people call her the Silk Queen, for she is sweet and soft, and absolutely unbreakable.

Lucy Pevensie holds no fear of anything so they say. They are wrong, of course: the knowledgeable point to her and say look, do you not see her fear? Can you not see it? Look a little closer, yet she continues. Lucy holds her head high as any Queen, laughing at the horrors of the world as though she’s walked them already and knows – or believes, but what’s the difference – that they hold no lasting threat to her. Her hands never shake, they say, her hands are steady and fast and brave. Her aim is true.

They say, when you are afraid, young Lucy Pevensie comes to you and places her hand in yours and pulls you forwards to your panic, through it, unbreaking stone at your side. Brave courageous, they call her, indomitable and fearless.

Valiant.


End file.
